The Value of “Good Enough for Now”

I’ve been giving some more thought to the idea of “good enough” as one of the criteria for defining minimum viable/valuable products. I still stand by everything I wrote in my original “The Value of ‘Good Enough’” article. What’s different is that I’ve started to use the phrase “good enough for now.” Reason being, the phrase “good enough” seems to imply an end state. If it is early in a project, people generally have a problem with that. They have some version of an end state that is a significant mismatch with the “good enough” product today. The idea of settling for “good enough” at this point makes it difficult for them to know when to stop work on an interim phase and collect feedback.

“Good enough for now” implies there is more work to be done and the product isn’t in some sort of finished state that they’ll have to settle for. I’m finding that I can more easily gain agreement that a story is finished and get people to move forward to the next “good enough for now” by including the time qualifier.